LIGHTNOVELWORLD Chapter 922 He Doesn't Know About The Window
We entered the manor and I realised that the interior was almost as bad as how the building looked outside.
It was clear that he either didn't have time to fix and clean this place up since there was still debris and broken pieces of furniture scattered around the place… Or that he is just some lazy idiot who chose to leave this place as it is.
"Err… Nice place you got here," I told him a little lamely. "Is there anything I should know before we start our investigation?"
He paused for a moment as he shut the front door, "Umm… I guess you should know that I'm not familiar with this building since I only recently got the place…"
That kind of contradicts what you said earlier but I decided not to point that out… If he really only recently got this place then how the heck would he be able to have managed to get those permits? That is assuming that there were even such permits in the first place, of course.
I simply nodded at him and pretended to start my inspection of the place. But in reality, I was simply looking for any signs of the slaves he had kidnapped around the place.
Katsuki had mentioned that there should be a basement under this building and there's rune traps present as well so anything that related to those should be a clue.
I was a little worried about the traps since this guy didn't mention them, which was sort of my initial test to see if he would tell us about it when I asked that question.
Either he doesn't know about the existence of these rune traps and they were set up by someone else, or he chose not to say anything and was hoping that we would fall to the traps.
Thus, I decided to test him a second time by pointing at one of the rune traps that I found which was literally engraved on the wall next to the door that we just passed through.
"Is that supposed to be a mark or a sign that the thieves left behind?"
He looked at the rune and I noticed that his eyebrow twitched slightly at the sight of the rune, as though he was slightly irritated that I even noticed its existence.
He shook his head, "That's just part of the decoration of the house. It was already there when I came here so I guess the previous owner had some rather weird tastes."
Right… Guess I'll have to be careful of other rune traps he might have placed around the house then…
"Could you show me what the thieves might have taken or damaged? Maybe starting from the place that they had entered from?"
"Ah… Right this way."
He started walking towards the stairs that led up to the second floor and I quickly realised where he was leading us before we even got there.
Sure enough, he led us to the room at the far end of the corridor and gestured at the door with a confident look on his face.
"They came through the door here and blocked it off."
As though to demonstrate, he tried to fiddle with the door handle and pushed his weight on the door itself to show that it wouldn't budge.
Hold on… For him to say something like that… Don't tell me that he hasn't actually gone outside of the manor from the front door and has been using his Astromancy to teleport out instead?
That would explain how he didn't see the rope hanging out of the window…
I'm not sure if this was him trying to be careful to avoid being seen or he was just lazy…
I made a shooing motion at him, "Let me try."
He crossed his arms, "It's no use. I even tried to kick down the door but it wouldn't even budge no matter how hard I tried. I believe they completely sealed it off with magic or something."
I doubt it… If I had to guess, the room belonged to some criminal slave who made a rope out of tying several different pieces of cloth together to escape out the window. But they were afraid of being caught so they moved the room's furniture to block the door.
Then this guy did not want to damage anything in this manor house any more than it was already damaged and chose to just leave the door as it is.
In that case…
I pretended to wrestle with the door for a bit and true to his word, the door was indeed refusing to budge despite how I was pushing my entire weight against the door.
The stupid Off-Worlder had a smug look on his face like he was trying to say "I told you so" when he saw that I could not open the door either.
When I considered breaking down the door, Katsuki stepped forward and pulled out a pair of daggers.
"Should I break down the door, Mistress?"
Well... Since you're offering…
I gestured at the door for her to go ahead and before the Off-Worlder guy could stop her, her hands had slashed out in a blur and the daggers in her hands disappeared as though they had just been an illusion.
Nothing happened for a few seconds before slash marks appeared on the surface of the door which was followed closely by a groaning sound.
Slowly, a piece of the door slid out and dropped onto the ground which seemed to have set off a chain reaction as even more slash marks appeared on the door and it completely fell apart to be reduced into pieces right in front of us.
Behind the broken door was something wooden that covered the entire doorway which I guessed must have been what prevented the door from opening in the first place.
Judging by the size of the thing, I'm guessing it might have been the room's wardrobe or something.
The Off-Worlder was still staring at the destroyed door in shock so he didn't even stop Katsuki when I nodded at her again, indicating that she should cut that one down as well.
The two daggers I had seen her use earlier suddenly appeared in her hands again and she slashed at the wooden 'wall' with a quick flurry of strikes once again.
I watched as the slash marks appeared on the wood after a short moment before it crumbled just like how the door had, revealing a pile of chairs, tables and other furniture that was stacked up behind it.
Seems like they really barricaded this door to make sure he couldn't go in here huh?
Since the rest were just loose furniture, I simply strolled in and kicked them over to cause an avalanche of furniture into the room.
Inside, I could finally see that the cloth rope was tied to the bed frame before being thrown out of the window which I had no doubt was used by the slaves to escape.
The Off-Worlder finally shook himself out of his stupor when he saw the state of the room.
"What… What happened he-- I mean… What did they do to my room?!"
He's still trying to pretend like they actually broke into the manor through this room, huh… In the first place, you should be able to realise that this was impossible given the fact that the cloth rope was tied to the bed frame which would have been impossible if they were coming from the outside.
He's not going to tell me that they came into this room, tied the cloth rope to the bed frame, threw it outside the window, then went back outside just to climb back in, right?
You know what… Don't even answer that question… Because I have a feeling he might just come up with something even more ridiculous than that to try and justify this…
That's why all I did was just turn and raise a questioning eyebrow at him just to see what he would say about the sight in front of me.
He seemed genuinely surprised at the sight as he took a step inside the room and started looking around.
"So this was how they left…"
He stopped and seemed to have caught his own words because he quickly added, "I mean the thieves of course… I was wondering how they were able to leave the house after locking the door like that."
I pointed at the rope dangling out the window, "You didn't see this? It has to be hanging outside the window… We saw it when we were approaching the building too and thought something was wrong which was why we approached."
That's another lie of course but he didn't need to know that.
He hesitated, "I… I haven't left through the front door ever since I came in here ok? I was just busy trying to clean this place up and there's a lot of things to clean up!"
Yeah… That's a poor excuse if I ever heard one…
"Can I see the rest of the house then?"
"Sure… Be my guest… I suppose…"
Why do I feel like he's planning something?
Whatever, let's see where this goes…